Demographic and socio-economic variation in arts engagement across 23 countries and territories: individual and societal-level disparities

The “arts” encompass a diverse range of human practices ubiquitous in every human culture since palaeolithic times. Evidence from diverse interdisciplinary fields highlights the importance and value of the arts to individuals and society. However, we have little behavioural understanding about human patterns and profiles of arts engagement globally. The present study reports on new behavioural data on arts participation available in a multi-national study of adults living in 23 countries and territories collectively representing 46% of the global population, merged with aggregate country-level metrics. Our results suggest high levels of arts engagement can emerge across diverse geographic, economic, and cultural contexts, but there are concerning patterns of inequalities in engagement present at individual and country levels and persistent across the life-course. The analyses presented here thus also provide new insights and recommendations for how future data can be collected to more accurately phenotype arts engagement as a human behaviour.